Beyond my control

I have in my mind an image of a quite short person, seething with indignation, almost fit to burst with anger, one more tiny annoyance likely to send them right over the edge, to make them literally pop with fury, like an over-inflated and especially red balloon - an especially red balloon full of fury.

Their much taller antagonist looks down at them. With a maddeningly indulgent smile he or she perkily intones: "Oh, don't be such a Grumpa-Loompa!"

The short person explodes.

My brain came up with that word earlier today, 'Grumpa-Loompa', apropos of nothing. I think it may be trying to kill me. It knows I won't be able to resist using it, should I ever be in that situation - it'll be the one urging me on. It knows it will. My brain is not a good person.

Another pun probably best left unsaid: As a mother, you're 'fair to meddling.'

[Mother-in-law?]

Might be good in the right short story, though.


DISCLAIMER: Happily, I've never had to use that pun, and doubt I ever will :) So don't worry, if you're reading.

DISCLAIMER THE SECOND: My brain probably isn't trying to kill me. It's perfectly aware that I'm so short that the height differential between myself and virtually any other adult human will never be inappropriately comic enough to get me murdered by a Grumpa-Loompa. But I can daydream (and sometimes talk to the cat).

Sixth Sense & Sensibility

Make up a clever title for a SEQUEL to a famous movie (e.g. "Reforrest Gump"), it said on Twitter. It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Monsters vs. Aliens vs. Predator

Aging Bull

The Man Who Wasn't There (But Came Back Again)

The Universe According to Garp

The Princess Memoirs

Pride & Diversity Training

What's Eating Gilbert Raisin?

Attack Of The Killer Passata

Million Dollar Toddler

Paris - When It Drizzles

Gosford Park: The Lost World

Scarfacelift

Deconstructing Harry (& The Hendersons)

April Of The Penguins

The Huge Lebowski

A Nightmare On Wall Street

American History XI

Brief Encounters Of The Third Kind

Fitzcarraldone

A Solar-Powered Orange

The Lion, The Witch, And The Strongly Worded Letter To Ikea


And that's more than enough of that.

An assortment of unsorted thoughts (of sorts)

Today, I bought baking potatoes with a blank Best Before Date. It wasn't so much the potatoes I wanted as a little unpredictability. (But only a little).

Is it safe to put unpredictability in a microwave?



Lately, I've been reading a lot of webpages written by people with a positive "can do" attitude. It's very inspiring.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of webpages written by people with a positive "can do" attitude. It's very annoying.

The web's very polarising like that.

So are people, though.

And mood swings.



It's long been a mystery to me - and to anyone else who's ever been optimistic enough to ask - what exactly it is that I do all day. I'm still not 100% sure what the answer is, but I'm starting to narrow it down.

I think it involves a sort of metaphorical gardening.

Metaphorical gardening and coffee.

(Come back when the flowers are starting to bloom - I'll be the one trying not to sneeze. But at least I should have a better answer by then).



MATCH OF THE DAY. POST-MATCH INTERVIEW.

JAMIE CARRAGHER: "We were a bit like a daisy today... [LONG PAUSE]... Lackadaisical."

Sometimes I actually do post cat videos here...

Well, sort of:



A collaboration between Richard Dinnis and Michael Page.

Chicken coop for the soul...

So, I'm assuming there's no-one here. Poetry can have that effect. As can disappearing for a couple of months without the faintest explanation.

Actually, I think it was the silence that drew me back here: the thought of a quiet little corner in which to mutter pointless grumpinesses at myself for a while, while no-one's looking...

But I'm not really grumpy, it turns out; I'm disappointed. What about, I'm not sure (I tried to work it out, but didn't get anywhere, which was a bit of a let down and hardly helped matters); as much as I can tell, it's just free-ranging and general.

I prefer the battery-reared kind.

You know where you are with battery-reared disappointment. It doesn't run around. It probably would, but it's just not bred for it, and it's wings have probably been clipped. Instead, it just sits there and lets you steal its eggs, which aren't fertile in any case. All round, it's much the safer emotion.

God knows where I was going with that. I don't even approve of animal cruelty. Emotional cruelty, on the other hand... apparently I'm all in favour.

(I'm going to just stop writing now, before I discover that I'm in favour of self-help seminars for turkeys. I'm fairly sure I'm not, but it might be one of those nights).

Nothing to see here

The text below has been centrally aligned, which I believe is the standard warning that poetry may follow. Should you prefer watching crabs fight over a doomed sandcastle to a synthy post-rock soundtrack, click here.

ANDS UNDROPPED

When is and was
(and in and)
went to see
and saw
that is was was and when was who
they stopped, these two, and swore -

Bugger they said
This is confusing

In a land of is and was and this
of who and which and when
where was is is and who is where
and when will all this end

here and now
is all we have
and if that doesn't seem like much
go and in and
and I to I
(and such and such and such) -


(it'll be no less confusing

but ands are nice:

two touch


____(and touch
_

_________and touch,

Seriously. What are you still doing here? You could be watching seagulls being complete bastards, and crabs that seem to have been filled with ink for some reason...* You're a fool unto yourself, I tell you. A fool unto yourself.

(Anyway, sorry, the above was a bad E. E. Cummings rip-off - I've been reading his poems on and off all day - they're bloody marvellous - and apparently I just couldn't help myself. As for the video, I'm mildly baffled by it, and it's not nearly their best song - this might be - but there's a line or two that sort of fit in with the above, so I guess the link stays).

*or is this usual?

Reverse-engineered karaoke

Is it real?
Yes.

Why?
I don't know. I really don't know.

What would happen if you fed it the vocals from Creep?
Hmm, how odd that you should ask...



More songs impeccably ruined by Microsoft here. Actually, though, I think I kind of liked that version...



I know.



I can never, ever write for the NME now.



So that's one fewer awful fate awaiting me then :)

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump

If I'd had anything to do with (the original) Forrest Gump I expect his mother's great words of wisdom would have been more along the lines of: "Life is like a box of Cheerios, unlikely to tempt you out of bed before lunch." It wouldn't have been quite so popular, though, I suppose. Or have been remade with Brad Pitt in the title role.

Witness, The Curious Case of Forrest Gump:

And yes, both films really did have the same screenwriter.

[This was originally on Funny or Die, I think, but Paramount seems to have been trying to eradicate it from all the main video hosting sites, so it might well be unavailable by the time you read this - copyright reasons, it said on YouTube (at which point I'd make the obvious joke, but apparently Paramount owns both movies. Anyway, boooooo! to Paramount, for at least two reasons)].

I get around (eventually)

My inability to get around to things apparently knows no bounds, so until I get around to the things that I have to get around to before getting around to the new blog, here are a few links I've found while not getting around to things. If you get around to clicking on them, well done.

Andrew Bird has a new album; NPR were streaming it here, but now they're not. However, they do have quite an extensive interview/concert/article/etc. archive on the singer of such songs as A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left, that one about not being able to ride the concept of a horse, and the oddly prophetic one that talks about the "crumbled financial institutions of this land" but reassures with a chorus of: "Ooh-ooh, there will be snacks, there will / There will be snacks, there will be snacks," which certainly sugars the pill as far as I'm concerned, and all before anyone had even heard of Credit Crunch too.

Incidentally, the current financial scariness is all the fault of David Bowie, apparently.

A blog of superuseless superpowers, such as Left-side Levitation, and Psychic Amnesia (Mementodamus).

Photographic reconstructions of Far Side cartoons - mostly they're quite low on any kind of photographic artistry, but they should prevent you getting around to more useful things for at least a few seconds.

An oddly compelling cricket game, despite my general indifference to the real game. My top score so far, by the way: 401. And if only there were no need to write the words 'so far'... [sigh].

Movie scripts, screenplays and the like, free and downloadable at Simply Scripts.

Apparently Resonance FM has a sort of secular humanist, arts and ideas talk show programme every week. But if you can never quite get around to listening to it live, it's available as the Little Atoms podcast, featuring the likes of Jon Ronson, Stewart Lee, Linda Grant, Jonathan Meades, and to my surprise Jonathan Derbyshire, who tried to teach me philosophy many years ago. Despite that, I bear him no grudge, and oddly had encountered a few articles with his name attached to them very recently too (hadn't got around to checking it was the same bloke, of course, but sometimes chance does the job for you. But, alas, only sometimes).

The Daily Routines (or, possibly, lack thereof) of artists, writers, and other people prone to occasionally doing something interesting (and John Grisham). WARNING: may depress or reassure, depending on the person and the day. Or in the case of Flaubert, both; somehow.

A maker of wonderfully whimsical comics; and her friend's very accurate and amusing parody. Oh, and another online comics site anthology 2.0 thing (it has lots of comics, and is a bit 2.0-ish, or something).

Lego. Lots of lego.


Anyway, enough. I have things to be getting around to.

A vague announcement

I wonder if I can get away with saying the month-long pause was a tribute to the memory of Harold Pinter?

No, didn't think so. After all, at least three weeks of it weren't even posthumous (mmm, humous....)

Er, anyway, what I actually came here to say was that I might not be here much in future. I've got a bit bored of it all and am probably heading elsewhere. Not to the 140-character land of Twittering, mind; I just fancy a bit of a flight from reality for a while - not sure quite what that'll consist of yet, but more than likely it will take place aboard a blog.

More details as and when...

[strokes beard mysteriously]

[owner of beard glares and goes to sit somewhere else]